I learned today that Mala Htun, professor of political science at the University of New Mexico, died in January, after living with cancer for several years. She was the TA for my college course in the political economy of economic development. I could not now name most of my TAs, but a few of them stood out, as though everything about them was drawn with a surer hand and brighter colors. Mala Htun—I find myself wanting to call her “Dr. Htun,” although she wasn’t then, not yet—was one of them. She shone with a light of inner purpose, intellectual and moral, and was one of the sharpest people I have ever met. Whenever someone started to ask a question in the discussion section, she could see around multiple corners to know where they were going with it.
Two memories of her stand out for me. The first is of a time that a conversation spilled over after class. We walked across campus, still talking, and into a coffee shop as she got the caffeine to power her through the rest of the day. I regret that I can remember nothing about what we were discussing; it could have been import-substitution industrialization, or the greater influence of urban constituencies on developing governments, or one of a dozen other topics. But I had a sudden realization that here was someone with her own life (afterwards, she left to go grocery shopping) who took the subject, and my questions, seriously enough not to wave me off, as she absolutely could have.
The second is from years later, after Nienke Grossman and other brave women accused government professor Jorge Dominguez of sexual harassment across many years. Now-Professor Htun reached out to me to compare notes, to understand what we each had seen, or should have seen at the time. Again, it made a big impression on me; here was someone with all the markers of status and success that would have let her ignore something at that point two decades old, but who took seriously her responsibility to others traveling a harder road. From everything I understand about her career and her mentorship at UNM, it was completely in character.
I am both glad and sorrowful to say that she appears to have lived a life of personal and professional meaning. She published three books (on women and the state in Latin America), and after eleven years at the New School, she moved to UNM in her home town of Albuquerque. She was a special advisor to the dean on recruiting and retaining women and others from underrepresented backgrounds. She married in 2006 (in nearby Santa Fe) and is survived by her husband, her parents, a son, and two daughters. My heart goes out to them.
UNM is fundraising for a memorial academic fund to endow a chair in Professor Htun’s honor. It’s a completely inadequate tribute to the loss we all have suffered with her passing, but it’s also completely fitting.